


all these infinite (im)possibilities

by azurish



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Introspection, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Self-Deception, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:04:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There were only a few days every month or two when the fact that Courfeyrac wasn’t his and never would be (and yes, the selfish personal pronoun demanded to be used in the unfiltered privacy of Combeferre’s mind) deepened from an ache into an actual sting.  Those days, however – the days when Courfeyrac had no female companionship and the dull “what-ifs” that Combeferre usually silenced crystallized into piercing, sharp-edged “maybes” – made up for their infrequency with the bitterness they induced.  Regret hurt even more when you couldn’t make excuses any longer."<br/>Sometimes Combeferre is wise and self-reflective and above it all - and sometimes he's very human indeed.  But then, Courfeyrac has always had that effect on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all these infinite (im)possibilities

            There were only a few days every month or two when the fact that Courfeyrac wasn’t _his_ and never would be (and yes, the selfish personal pronoun demanded to be used in the unfiltered privacy of Combeferre’s mind) deepened from an ache into an actual sting.  Those days, however – the days when Courfeyrac had no female companionship and the dull “what-ifs” that Combeferre usually silenced crystallized into piercing, sharp-edged “maybes” – made up for their infrequency with the bitterness they induced.  Regret hurt even more when you couldn’t make excuses any longer.

            For most of their friendship, Courfeyrac had a woman on his arm.  One mistress or another; dark-haired, light-haired, tall, short, plump, thin – Courfeyrac charmed them all and courted them all and, it seemed, had an understanding with them all.  They laughed and loved him and he laughed and loved them and then they left each other amicably.  This cycle seemed to continue almost seamlessly from one girl to the next, leaving Courfeyrac blessedly unavailable and Combeferre blissfully able to pretend that the only impediment to his eventual happiness was the intractable presence of another paramour.

            Every so often, though, that cycle would be broken.  Courfeyrac would experience an unexpectedly turbulent separation or suffer from a rare broken heart and he’d be left avoiding girls for days.  Instead, he would spend his spare time flitting between his usual haunts and dragging his closest friends – particularly Combeferre (as Enjolras had somehow managed to present such a forbidding prospect the first time Courfeyrac had tried to accost him that Courfeyrac had actually refrained from imposing on him again) – along with him.  He had two variants during those times – cynical and frustrated, an affectation that always broke after a day or two, or determinedly, almost manically cheerful, an air that gradually mellowed into his usual exuberance within days.  But regardless of the specifics of Courfeyrac’s reaction, Combeferre always spent those days miserable.

            Courfeyrac bitter was always disturbing, and his unnatural caricature of happiness was upsetting.  Seeing his usual sunny personality overcast cast a shadow over the dispositions of his friends; the Musain seemed darker, with a tense, queasy atmosphere, like the stillness in the air when the gray clouds rolled in before a storm.  Everyone suffered when Courfeyrac was unhappy.  But it wasn’t just that Courfeyrac was hurting that distressed Combeferre; no, it was also seeing how _easy_ it could be.  How _easy_ it could be just to give in and slip himself into his friend’s life.  During those days, and those days alone, Combeferre found the inadvisable eliding into the possible when it came to their relationship, his subconscious willfully blind to all the reasons he _shouldn’t_ and transforming the _can’t_ into the _could_.

            Usually, Combeferre was singularly bad at self-deception.  He had trained himself into being brutally honest in self-reflection almost by accident.  He thought about himself as he thought about any subject: with the kind of cold, hard clarity that came from being suckled in the school of reason.  Rationalism had ruled him for long enough that he had fallen into the kind of mental habits that allowed to follow Laplace through _Mécanique Céleste_ , or comprehend Ampère’s lectures, or interpret Keats in the original English.  Acknowledging any assumptions he made, recognizing areas in which he lacked knowledge, refusing to accept any principles without explanation – such mental gestures had become second nature.  It was only natural that after a certain point, such attitudes would spill over from his academic studies into his contemplation of his own life.

            Combeferre almost prided himself on it.  It gave him a refreshing degree of clear self-awareness.  He knew when he was making a fool of himself or when he was saying something particularly clever.  He could distinguish between optimism and realism. He was no self-deceiving fool.

            There were times, however, when he yearned to be able to sink into the kind of pretenses his friends enjoyed.  When he heard Bossuet predict the success of his latest scheme, or Bahorel narrate his recent adventures and convince himself of the truth of his embellishments in the telling, or Jehan declare that he had found the perfect poet at last – the light in their eyes made him wish that he, too, could imagine such contentment for himself.  Sometimes, he _wanted_ to pretend that someday, he might wake up _every day_ next to Courfeyrac’s head of auburn curls and see his smile first thing in the morning.  But then the gravity of self-awareness would pull him back down to earth and gently remind him that no, such a future was impossible: Courfeyrac, after all, seemed perfectly content waking up next to some grisette most mornings, and that was that.  Still, every so often – when such thoughts occurred – Combeferre _almost_ wished that he weren’t always sharply aware of where reality fell away and dreams began.

            But those few days, every few months or so, dreams and reality blurred together, and then Combeferre would rediscover that really, his self-awareness was a form of _protection_.  Courfeyrac would lay a hand on his arm – the way he always did, the way he did and meant nothing by it – and Combeferre allowed himself to imagine what could happen if he leaned into the warmth of Courfeyrac’s body and curled up around that casual, unintentional grip.  Or Courfeyrac would declare that he had sworn off women entirely now – “just you, Combeferre, I’ll stick with you now” – and Combeferre would allow himself to pretend his friend meant it the way he _wanted_ him to.  Or Courfeyrac would lose himself in a point in one of their frequent, passionate philosophical arguments and Combeferre would allow himself to slip his mind out of the conversation for just a moment and ponder the ways they fit together so _perfectly_ , the ways the complemented each other so well, the ways they slotted neatly into each other’s gaps and empty spaces and made each other complete.

            It was a weakness – the way Combeferre wanted to linger in an embrace or rest his head on Courfeyrac’s shoulder the way a woman might or hold him closer than he properly should or allow a hand on his friend’s shoulder to creep up and run through his hair – but Combeferre always found that he couldn’t fight it.  He knew it was ridiculous; he knew, intellectually, that it was false.  But it _felt_ real.  It was the kind of terrifying internal contradiction that made him fear that perhaps, indeed, he _wasn’t_ strong or self-controlled enough to champion this new republic he wanted to build.  If he willfully blinded himself when it came to Courfeyrac – if he allowed himself to pretend that the warmth in Courfeyrac’s eyes when he looked at him was for _him_ and him alone – what prevented him from blinding himself when it came to the possibility, or even the very _desirability_ , of a change in governance?

            Or perhaps he should look at it as a triumph.  Because no matter how close he came to believing that he could just slip himself into Courfeyrac’s heart and his bed and his _life_ , Combeferre never stepped off that ledge.  Some detached part of him told him _no_ when all the rest of him wanted to lean forward and catch Courfeyrac in a way that would be more than friendly when his friend, tipsy from an evening of trying to forget his romantic woes, tripped over a cobblestone; or told him _no_ when Combeferre wanted to close that gap between their mouths when his friend leaned in while they were talking late in the evening in the Musain; or told him _no_ when Combeferre found the words for asking Courfeyrac if he wanted to “continue this discussion back at my flat” rising in his throat.

            He _wanted_ , but he stopped himself.  Maybe it really was as simple as all that.  (It hurt, though – it hurt more than usual, stopping himself – because when you were so close to the edge that a puff of breath could push you over, having to hold yourself back – having to _remind_ yourself that this was something that you could not have and would never have, that it wasn’t just the presence of the women stopping you but the very fact that he _did not_ love you – _stung_.)

            In rare moments of clarity during those days, Combeferre would reflect that he might, in fact, be the biggest fool of all of them.  Normally, he would chuckle with the rest of his friends when Grantaire strode into the Musain full of braggadocio, projecting the insouciance of a man who could have any grisette he wanted.  But Combeferre was no innocent unaware of the way that men could want men, and he could see the way the drunkard looked at Combeferre’s closest friend – and so he knew that Grantaire, for all he _said_ that he could have anyone he wished, knew better than to believe his own words.  Grantaire knew that it was best to watch Enjolras from afar.  Grantaire might pretend he could have anyone – but Combeferre was the only one who ever came close to _believing_ his own fictions when he pretended that Courfeyrac really could be his, and that might make him even more of a fool.  Discovering the own limits of his self-awareness was a bitter exercise indeed.

            And then Courfeyrac would come meet Combeferre for lunch one day and announce with one of his bright, broad grins that he had found a girl and she was “wonderful, Combeferre, really lovely” that would be it.  Combeferre could bury his uneasy relationship with reality when it came to his friend and return to telling himself that the whole thing was irrelevant, because Courfeyrac had a girl on his arm, and that was that.  Whatever Courfeyrac might ever be to him became unimportant.  He didn’t have to examine the exact nature of the truth, and for that fact, for those conditions that allowed him to gloss over whatever weakness he might have, he was grateful.  He could go back to being self-aware and wiser than any human had a right to be.

            (There was something grasping and ungrateful in Combeferre’s heart, though, that wasn’t quite so content – that snarled and yelled and _wanted_ – that _liked_ those few days, for all that they hurt him and confused him, that held those days close and pored over them.  It was confusing and too hot and painful and it grounded him – dragged him back down to earth out of the celestial world of the rational that he hid in sometimes.  Combeferre loved his friend and, for better or for worse, it was enough to break all his iron-clad rules about self-deception.)


End file.
